Uber “fights dirty” trying to lure drivers, black car rival Gett says

While Uber may be the dominant player in the tech-fueled, smartphone-driven black car sector (a more upscale cousin to the quasi-taxi firms like Lyft and Sidecar), it’s clearly concerned about upstarts encroaching on its turf.

On Friday, Gett, a new black car player in New York City that has thus far been operating in European and Israeli cities, publicly accused Uber of conducting what it described as a physical denial-of-service attack last week by making "nearly two hundred Gett" requests to drivers, only to immediately cancel them.

He added that Uber was offering cash to drivers as an incentive to leave their existing fleet-driving jobs, but he declined to say how much Uber was offering. At present, Gett has approximately 1,000 drivers in New York.

For its part, Uber said in an online statement that its move was "likely too aggressive," adding that it "regrets the team’s approach to outreach of these drivers."

"But to be clear, there was no time spent by the providers, as the requests were canceled immediately and Uber did pay cancellation fees for these requests," the company added. "We have messaged city teams to curtail activities that seek lead generation by requesting transportation services."

Promoted Comments

Last weekend an Uber driver, with a fare, blared its horn at a vehicle not making a right-turn that was allowing my girlfriend and I to walk across the street while we had the right of way. When I gave the Uber driver an understandable "really? did you just encourage someone to run us over?" look he yelled "Go Seahawk's!" out the window and drove off as his fare, wide-eyed, looked at one another. I was wearing 49er gear in San Francisco coming home from having watched the NFC Championship game, so imagine my bemusement.

The point of the story is that this type of behavior was such I'd previously associated only with traditional cab drivers in the city. Up until that point my experiences with Uber was that they tend to be a bit more classy than this.

Recruiting anyone and everyone is a bold strategy. We'll see how that plays out for them.